Song as Old as Rhyme
by Equestrienne Dreams
Summary: "...that which we are, we are: one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by Time and Fate, but strong in will; to strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield." At long, long last, love triumphs. Lynley, Havers, and how they become something more.
1. Ever Just As Sure

"Barbara, take my hand!"

"Wha – "

Before she can get the word out he's yanked her into a nook just barely big enough to fit the two of them. The sound of running feet gets louder and louder, gunfire echoing off the brick walls; his palm is sweaty in hers but she doesn't notice.

The steps come even closer, and she squeezes his hand instinctively, facing the final, awful truth; they're hidden temporarily, but they would be found. And what would happen then…

Suddenly she becomes aware of his chest heaving against hers, setting her heart to racing even more than it already is, and she looks up into bright brown eyes that are not just fearful, but abruptly thunderstruck.

"Oh dear God," he whispers, as though he's just had some revelation from the high heavens that changes absolutely everything and is kicking himself for not realizing it earlier. "Barbara, you know how they say that when you're about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes?"

She nods, wide-eyed and breathless, utterly lost in him. "Yeah. What about it?"

His eyes are burning into hers now, and he's looking at her as though he's never seen her before. "I should have done this a long time ago," he breathes, and without another word his mouth is on hers, kissing her as though the world's about to end and he wants to taste every part of her before it does.

Her whole body goes supernova, and she wraps her arms around his neck, holds on for all she is worth, and kisses him back with everything in her – with ten long years of passion and fury and friendship and unspoken love. They are minutes away from death, she has loved him for far longer than she cares to think about, and damn it, she will have this, just this once, before it's all over.

Good God, but this is one _hell_ of a goodbye.

* * *

They survive. Of course they survive.

In every moment of beauty, after all, lies the practical joke at its heart.

"That never happened." Her words are flat, harsh, almost too harsh to her ears, and the look on his face breaks her heart clean in two.

"Don't do this, Barbara." His words are low, dangerous. "It _did_ happen. Don't tell me to forget because I can't. I _can't_ forget the one thing I never knew I wanted till I thought I'd die without having it. Don't… don't. Please."

"Never wanted it till you knew you'd only ever have to do it once, you mean," she bites out, and cuts him to the quick. "Don't try to spin this, sir. You wanted me because I was there. Not because you wanted _me._ " Her words are cruel, deliberately so. He can almost see the spines rising from her back, like the terrified, broken-legged hedgehog she once coaxed out of hiding, ignoring its spines lancing her skin so she could get it to a vet before it got eaten.

She looks like she thinks he's going to eat her now.

And he wants to, oh _God_ how he wants to, but not in the way she thinks. It's as though the world has suddenly come alive with blazing colour after decades of nothing but grey, and he…

…wants to push her up against the nearest wall, tug down her jeans, take her from behind as she falls apart in his arms…

…wants to lay her down on satin sheets and worship her by candlelight in a room smelling of roses…

…wants to shred the baggy t-shirt that hides curves he can only imagine, has only half-glimpsed in plain black dresses and oversized pyjamas…

…wants to wake up to her every morning and fall asleep with her every night…

…wants what he's never been able to have before because all this time, he was waiting for _her._

"You think I could kiss you like that and not mean it?" His voice breaks, and he doesn't care.

"I think you meant it when we were two steps away from dying! But let's face facts." Her voice is dark and bitter and full of self-loathing that strikes him to his heart. "Deborah, Helen, Christine, Julia – you meant it with them too! All of them! And look how they worked out. It's not that I don't think you mean it _now._ It's that I know you're going to look at me in a year or two and wonder what you were thinking! I'm just a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and you're the Earl of Asherton. I won't fit into that world, into _your_ world, and we both know it. I'm no well-heeled lady with a knack for the social graces! Eventually you'll get frustrated that I can't be what you need. You'll leave, you'll move on to someone else, and it'll poison the only thing that's ever made my life worth a damn! What we have, it's enough. Why fuck up something so good for something that can't last?"

"And if it's not enough? If it hasn't been enough for months now? Barbara, _I love you._ I think I've loved you since I saw you bleeding on a London street with a bullet in your abdomen. Hell, I may have loved you since I saw that boat speeding toward me in the North Sea! You're…" He throws up his hands in disgust. "You're different. You've always _been_ different! Why can't you believe that?"

She wraps her arms around herself, looking terribly small. "Give me one good reason why I should."

Helpless, he stares at her in silence. He can't think of anything; she's right, and he knows it. She has no good reason to believe him. Not with his track record. Every accusation she'd thrown in his face had been the truth. Had he honestly expected her to fly into his arms with joy? His fey, suspicious partner?

Gutted, he sinks onto a bench. _I should have known. After what it took just to get her to trust me, did I honestly expect this to be any easier? And the truth is, she's right. I can't explain why she's different because I can't even articulate it to myself._

"There, you see?" she says doggedly. "The truth is that – it's you. Damn it, it's always been you. Because I love you so much it's tearing me apart. And that's why I can't have you. If we do this, when it ends, it will destroy me. I can't do it. I can't love you and lose you and watch you move on, because I never will."

"Please." He is perilously close to begging now, and he doesn't care. "Please, Barbara. You're the best part of me."

"You're the best part of me, too," she says, and means it with everything in her. "But my answer is still no. Please, don't make this any harder." This is tearing her apart inside, he can see it all over her face, and more than anything else he wants to gather her to him and make all the hurt go away. But he can do none of that.

"All right," he says heavily. "All right." He can't stop himself reaching for her hand, and she squeezes briefly before she pulls away. "Are we – "

"We're all right," she says gently. "You're still what you've always been to me. You're still…" Her eyes meet his, love and torment roiling in those green depths. "You're still my reason to get up in the morning." Bowing her head, she scrubs her eyes with the heels of her hands. "But you know it can't ever be the same. I'm sorry." She rakes one searing, desperate look over his face, then turns and runs to her car, her hair blowing in the breeze. Carried on the wind he can hear the faint sound of crying.

"No," he says to himself, his eyes still fixed on her as hope still burns in his heart despite everything, because he cannot, he _will_ not give up on the best thing that has ever happened to him. Someday, he swears, he will convince her, or die trying. "But maybe, someday, we can be better."


	2. As the Sun Will Rise

"Don't go home."

She stands there with him on the doorstep, her face inscrutable, and six weeks of unacknowledged, un-discussed declarations hover in the air between them. "Sir –"

"Please," he says, just a hair desperately. "Barbara – I can't face an empty house. Not tonight. Your usual room is always ready, you know that, and I can't – "

"Sir –", she tries again.

"I can't be alone," he finishes. "I nearly lost you today. And I can't…"

" _Yes,_ " she says, a bit more forcefully than she intended, and finally he looks at her. "You idiot, I was trying to say 'yes'." She goes silent for a moment, bowing her head, her eyes fixed on the ground, and when she looks up at him again those eyes are as hurt and scared as his own. "I don't really want to be alone tonight either," she admits at last, and smiles shyly. "I nearly lost you, too."

They go to bed not long afterward, Barbara stumbling through the door of her preferred guest room and falling asleep before she can even undress. Exhausted, she curls up on top of the covers and lets the world fall away.

* * *

His harsh scream brings her running.

" _Barbara!"_ The sobs tear from his throat, from his heart; the nightmare has left him shaking, a cold sweat filming his skin as he reaches for her, half conscious, all terrified.

She bolts through the door, reaches for his hand, looks at his face.

And the memories slam her.

He is looking at her as though she is his answer, his everything, his guiding light, north star, compass rose. And she remembers, with a shock of wonder, that he has looked at her that way before. So many, many times before, looking to her, at her, just that way.

Outside a country pub, shaking with adrenalin and grief and terror and things too sharp to name.

On a hill above London, the cemetery below them.

In her little flat in Hackney, when the world is dark and quiet and he has come to her for answers and for peace.

In a bare room at the Yard, suspected of murder with nowhere to turn.

Deep inside her heart, a spark of hope she had all but extinguished years ago flares into life.

"Oh God," she says, not even aware she's saying it, as she clings to the door handle because it's the only thing holding her upright with her legs too weak to stand. Fire has scorched her down to her bones, she is burning alive with knowing that _he loves her_ and it is so different, always different, because she _has always been different,_ she has always been his only exception to every rule, and she feels as if she might die with it, but she doesn't want to, she can't die with it now, not with the _knowing_ that _he loves me too._

She walks dreamily across the room, her eyes glued to his. When her feet catch the edge of the rug she stumbles, and it's enough to have her collapsing on the edge of the bed. She is staring at him like she cannot tear her eyes away, and then she shakes once, all over, and kisses him, artless, hard, her teeth scraping his lip, her tears falling like rain.

She had wanted to know if his affections were a fleeting thing, a flight of fancy to vanish when the next pretty, well-heeled lady arrived in his life. Had wanted to know if in six months or a year she would still be good old Barbara, his partner and nothing more, his affections vanished when they had a better, a more suitable target.

But not until tonight had she known that the answer was in his face all along.

Months of this, years of it, that same look on his face, and now no denying that his love for her was anything but fleeting, anything but transient. Whatever else had come and gone in their lives, that look had never changed, as constant as the sunrise, and now she recognised it for precisely what it was.

All these long years, he had been looking at her the way a man looks at the love of his life.

"Oh," he says into her mouth, a broken-off cry as he kisses her. "How?" Kisses her again. "Why?" And again, messy, brutal. Everything.

"I needed you to show me," she says, her lips on his skin, in his hair, "show me it wasn't a passing thing. You're everything, do you see? I couldn't risk this, if it might be just a fancy."

"And then?" His hands fret at the cable knit of her sweater, tangle in the ponytail of her hair.

"I saw your face. When I came through the door." She sobs into his mouth a little, bent over him still, can't stop touching. "It was me you were screaming for. And I realised. You have been showing me, haven't you? All this time it was in your face. It's always been in your face."

He nods. There are no words for this, this new understanding. Something deep inside him stretches and pulls, then settles; loving her aches a bit, has for years. She is not his perfect fit, but he knows without knowing how that she is his soul's mate, whatever that means.

His hands curl in the rough cotton-wool of her sweater. "You'll stay?"

"Yes." Her answer is instant, unthinking. "But I haven't – you'd think I'd have pyjamas here, after two years of this, but I never – I was too afraid – "

"It's all right." Gently he nudges her off him, slips out of bed. Judith has a few things here, Barbara has used them before, but it is not her things he goes for. Some primal part of him needs to see her in his clothes, marked by his life and not his sister's.

His hands find an old Oxford tee shirt, far too big for her small curvy frame, the cotton blend worn thin and stretched out of shape with the years. She takes it from him, her hand shaking a little, as he rummages again, comes up with a pair of navy tartan boxers. When he turns to her there's a question in his eyes.

She takes those too, navy tartan flannel and grey cotton in her hands, and ducks her eyes, shy. It hits him that in a way this is more intimate than sex.

It feels right. Essential.

The door is hard wood against her fingers. She doesn't want to leave this sanctuary, this haven, but she is in her way as old-fashioned as he is. When he sees her naked body for the first time, it will be by dim lamplight, a prelude to something as ancient and timeless as the stars. Until then, this is the one secret she will keep – for now.

She smiles at him, and slips through the door.

The room suddenly feels empty. Too empty, cold and bare.

She comes back in just a few minutes later, her hair down around her shoulders, a brush in her hand. The soft, thin cotton drapes her body, hints at the dip of her waist, skims over the curve of belly and breast, flares at her hip and bum. It is, as he thought, far too big for her; the neckline slips over one shoulder, bares the skin there. The hem hits her mid-thigh; he can just see navy and green flannel below it, half hidden.

He shudders, hard. In the back of his mind he can see a bridge engulfed in flames. No going back now; he has made his mark, staked his claim. The declaration is written in the brightness of her eyes, in the cotton and flannel that caress her naked skin. This is their Rubicon.

Mutely she offers him the brush. Asking, tentative, silent. She wants this with him, this intimacy, this freedom. Wants to bare it all to him, with him.

Wants to share his bed.

Gently he takes the brush from suddenly nerveless fingers. Boar bristle and wood. It's a plain thing, utilitarian, but surprisingly soft and gentle.

He props himself against the headboard, in the middle of a bed that has long been too big for just him alone. He has been waiting for this, for her, without knowing it even.

She sits on the edge; he draws her back, closer to him. She sighs when he draws the bedcovers over her lap.

He takes the brush to her hair, strokes, smooth and firm, but not too hard. Her hair, soft and straight and fine, slips like flame silk through his hands, through the bristles.

Again and again he draws the brush through her hair, a trail of softness in his wake. He works at knots with expert hands, untangling, smoothing, gentling; she leans into his touch, gives up her shields here in safety with him.

When he sets the brush aside she sighs again, smiles, sleepy. His hands card through the masses of her hair and begin to weave, over and under, over and under, clumsy fingers plaiting her hair, tying it off with the thin elastic wrapped around the handle of the brush. The plait is loose, chunky, flyaway, a far cry from the smooth even ripples of her own neat, practised fingers, but beautiful, she thinks, knowing it without seeing it, the work of his hands in her hair.

Her head tilts back, resting on his shoulder, the long, open column of her throat bared to the puff of his warm breath on her skin. He kisses her there, light, like butterfly wings, with a reverence that dries her mouth. Something warm and aching and beautiful snags in her heart, like the taste of Irish coffee in the cold damp winter.

Suddenly overcome, he tucks his face into the smooth curve where her neck meets her shoulder, his arms holding her tight, so tight. She relaxes into his embrace, hand coming up to stroke through the fine short silk of his hair, then hold him fiercely to her, as he shakes around her.

She said _yes._

"Yeah, I did." Her voice is in his ear now, low and warm and oh, so gloriously _happy._ Because she is, he can hear it in her voice, she is not shielding anything; she is happy down to her bones, and _he is the reason for it,_ and for a mad second he thinks it will burn him alive with wanting her, with loving her. "And even on the worst days when I think you're the world's biggest _idiot,_ and want to shake you and slam doors and throw things, if you ask me again I'll still say yes, because no matter how angry or hurt or broken I am I will _always love you._ "

Blindly his hand seeks her face, brushes her cheek. "It took me years to fall in love with you," he murmurs, low and fervent. "God knows when you walked in that first day I never dreamed that one day I would look at you and see my world entire. But by the end of that first case, I thought, _this is the partner I've been looking for my whole career, or she will be if I don't kill her first!_ I knew then that – oh, Barbara, I knew that somehow we _fit,_ even when we didn't _._ And now – I _know_ you, darling, all you are, and – I never put much stock in the idea of soul mates, Barbara, but if they do exist, you have to be mine."

She sits up, just enough to turn her head and look at him, still mostly enfolded in his arms. "Then you're mine, too," she says quietly, not wondering, but beautifully sure. "I wanted so much to hate you when we first met, but I couldn't. Then I liked you, even when I tried not to. I felt it, too, you know, from that first case. That – how did you say it? That somehow we fit, even when we didn't. And then I fell in love with you, and – well, that's it, really." Her shrug is a little shy, a little uncertain, but she is still in his arms and that is more than enough. "I couldn't tell you why I love you, except that you're _you_."

He kisses her forehead, then her eyelids, swamped by a peace more complete than he has ever known. Everything they have ever been has led to this – to quiet vows spoken here in his bed, with only the two of them and the truth of what they are to each other.

"'It may be the gulfs will wash us down,'" he murmurs, the Tennyson coming to his lips with the familiarity of an old friend, "'it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles; and see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' we are not now that strength which in old days moved Earth and Heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, but not to yield.'"

She kisses him then, her lips soft and sweet on his, and he knows that she knows exactly what he is trying to say with words that are not his because none of his own can begin to do them justice. "'Doubt thou the stars are fire,'" she begins, beaming at the surprise that must be written all over his face, "'doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar, but _never_ doubt I love!' I may not have your education, darling," she teases softly, "but even I had to get something out of all those years of English cla–"

He cuts her off with his mouth on hers, because she is _here_ , because she is quoting schoolgirl Shakespeare at him, because she is making this nod to a world that is not hers by birth, but is hers by love, out of nothing more than love for him and it says more than whole reams of Yeats or Byron or Browning, and because she is beautiful and beloved and _his_ at long, long last.

She kisses him back with a moan that shakes him to his core. Her chest heaves under his hands; she is panting into his mouth, her hands fisted in the cotton of his vest, and he can taste the salt of the tears that have escaped her eyes against her lips.

Their first kiss had been passion cut short by fear and heartbreak; their second they had barely noticed in the torrent of relief and overwhelming joy that had crashed over them both. But this – for the first time in his life he is kissing Barbara Lynne Havers with nothing between them but _yes,_ because she loves him and he loves her and more than anything else in the world she _believes_ him, and the very fact of it blazes through nerve and muscle and bone to set him ablaze from the inside out.

This is a moment years in the making and months in the dreaming, and yet all his dreams of this moment are a pale shadow of the incandescent reality.

Partner, critic, confidante, champion, anchor, lover, friend – she is all this and so much more. He is no hero and she is no princess and this is anything but a fairy tale, and none of it matters because she is here and she loves him and she said _yes_ and God above it is so much more than enough.

He pulls his mouth from hers at last, head still spinning. "Not like this," he manages. "Not tonight." Her face flashes from hurt to anger and back again, and the muddled explanation spills from his lips without thought. "We have to do this properly," he manages, his eyes still caught in hers. "I want to do this with roses and candlelight and..."

"I don't care," she says quietly. "It doesn't matter to me, love. You have to know it doesn't. I just want you."

"I know." How to explain this? "I know you don't. Neither do I, really, but I do. Not because just being with you isn't special enough. It is, I swear. You looking at me like this, just knowing you want me… that makes it special enough. It always will. But this is…" He thinks for a minute as she looks at him, patient and listening.

"This is the last first time either of us will ever have," he says at last. "I think we both know that. And, more importantly, it's the only first time _we_ will ever have. I want the trappings, Barbara, I want to give you roses and take my time with you. I want us to have all night and all the next day to just drown in each other. I want every single moment to remember for the rest of our lives. Because this is the first time, and the last first time, and that's worth waiting for no matter how desperately I want you now."

She blinks, once, twice, then kisses him again, soft and slow and sweet. "All right," she says a little unsteadily, "I won't exactly say no to that." She looks up at him, eyes bright. "The last first time, huh?" A smile curls the corners of her mouth and sends shivers down his spine.

"Well, yes." It's a little bit presumptuous, he knows, and yet it is no more or less than the absolute truth. "For me, at the least. Now I have you, anything else would be pointless at best."

She looks away from him for just an instant, clearly overcome. "For me, too." She murmurs the words, and the heat of her breath dances on his skin.

Suddenly, profoundly exhausted, he slumps back into the pillows, bringing her down with him. She curls into his side with a contented little hum, her head resting on his shoulder and her legs tangled with his as though she has been doing this for years, and he can barely move enough to switch off the lamp and pull the bedclothes over them both before his tired, hungry arms are closing around her.

"Sleep," she murmurs, more breath than sound. "I'm here, Tommy." Her voice catches, fear and pain and love and heartbreak and hope and _home_ all embodied in that one tiny sound. "I'm finally _here._ "

When he falls asleep at last, it's to the metronome of her heartbeat, the only sound he can hear.


End file.
